Originally the diary of 4 months spent in Antarctica working as a documentary film sound recordist, this blog has evolved into an online repository for the thoughts, travels and trivia of the writer Richard Fleming. For McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and polar exploration, see August through December of '06. Currently you are likely to find in these pages chronicles of my actual and literary meanderings, as well as notes on my many other passions. Also, did I mention I wrote a book?

11/04/2013

All the Bookworm leaders we don't trust

One of the huge array of free services and products that Google provides in order to get our data in their clutches is the automated transcription of voicemail messages. I have my cellphone set to forward all unanswered calls to Google Voice, which then instantly transcribes any left message and emails it to me. While typically garbled in whole or in part, the transcript is usually enough to gauge the basic content and urgency of the message. It is far easier to read an email than go through the rigamarole of dialing in and entering prompts to listen to a message, with the result that I no longer do the latter. Sometimes the transcripts are so incomprehensible as to be amusing. Blame Marty Markowitz's heavy Brooklyn accent.